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Articles by Ryan Chittum | Email the Author

 

1. The Audit

   Misplaying the SIGTARP Report

   November 17, 2009 01:32 PM

   Did the Federal Reserve have any leverage in its negotiations with AIG counterparties, the ones it paid one hundred cents on the dollar to for stuff worth far less? And if it did have some, how much? That's the nut... Continue reading

2. The Audit

   The Backdoor-Bailout Report Coverage

   November 17, 2009 10:27 AM

   Here's a win for the press, namely The New York Times and Bloomberg. The government, or one of its internal watchdogs anyway, the TARP Inspector General, looks at the AIG backdoor bailout of Wall Street (and France and Germany, etc.)... Continue reading

3. The Audit

   Monday Links: New Bubble; Raters; Government Support

   November 16, 2009 05:30 PM

   Steven Pearlstein says the Federal Reserve still hasn't learned its lesson about credit bubbles. Pearlstein adds to the growing chorus saying the Fed's policies have created a secondary bubble. — The Big Money has a piece looking at... Continue reading

4. The Audit

   Bloomberg: Bankers Doubling Down in Vegas

   November 16, 2009 01:56 PM

   Bloomberg has an interesting real estate story showing how banks are getting entangled in the wreckage of their loans. Deutsche Bank forced developer Ian Bruce Eichner to hand it the keys to his Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino in Las... Continue reading

5. The Audit

   Survey: Half of U.S. Would Pay (a Pittance) for Online News

   November 16, 2009 06:12 AM

   The New York Times reports on a new survey that says half of Americans would pay for news online if only they were charged. The bad news? They're only willing to pay an average $3 a month. That's largely... Continue reading

6. The Audit

   Friday Links: Conspiracy Check, Weak TBTF Defenses, The Road

   November 13, 2009 05:03 PM

   Gary Weiss at The Big Money takes a good look at five conspiracy theories about Wall Street and ranks their plausibility. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone goes one for two here. Weiss, a longtime critic of naked-short conspiracists, writes... Continue reading

7. The Audit

   Missing the Big Pfizer Kelo Story

   November 13, 2009 04:02 PM

   (UPDATE: Ted Mann of The Day points out that he wrote a news story before the Times on the Kelo angle, which I linked to [best I could—he's passed along one that actually works], so I've fixed the... Continue reading

8. The Audit

   A Perfect Bit of Uncountered PR Nonsense on Overdrafts

   November 13, 2009 10:37 AM

   The Federal Reserve is effectively banning the "overdraft protection" racket on debt cards by forcing banks to make customers opt-in to such a "service." Almost nobody really wants a service that on average costs you $368 a year, for... Continue reading

9. The Audit

   Thursday Links: 10,000 Applications, Glass Steagall Day, TARP

   November 12, 2009 07:56 PM

   The Washington Post reports on the jobless "recovery," a term it's still too early to use for the economy given that we've had one quarter of positive GDP growth and that was entirely due to increased government spending. But... Continue reading

10. The Audit

    NYT Examines the Impact of the Crisis on Kids

    November 12, 2009 01:47 PM

    A few weeks ago I praised a Sesame Street special, of all things, for putting a human face on the impact of the economic crisis on families. Today, The New York Times does something similar with a page-one... Continue reading

11. The Audit

    WSJ Tinkers With a Perfectly Good Story

    November 12, 2009 10:18 AM

    The Wall Street Journal has an interesting front-page story on tinkerers this morning, but the paper undermines it with a silly reach and a misleading headline aimed at newsifying the piece. Who doesn't want to read about inventors clinking... Continue reading

12. The Audit

    Wednesday Links: Wages, Pre-rolling in It, State Capitalism, Po’ Boys

    November 11, 2009 08:57 PM

    Breakingviews would like you to know, in its coldly calculating way, that Americans earn too much relative to the rest of the world and that we need to earn less while they earn more. Why? Well, free trade, which... Continue reading

13. The Audit

    A Snapshot of a Journalist at Work on Bear Stearns

    November 11, 2009 02:16 PM

    With Bear Stearns' Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin in the news, Janet Tavakoli passes along an excerpt from her new book we thought might be interesting to Audit readers—not only because it relates to Bear hedge funds' doings,... Continue reading

14. The Audit

    Some Misses on the Bear Stearns Acquittals

    November 11, 2009 11:30 AM

    The only Wall Street executives to be charged in the crisis walked away from a Brooklyn courthouse free men after a jury cleared them of lying to investors and insider trading. But the stories about Bear Stearns' Ralph Cioffi... Continue reading

15. The Audit

    Tuesday Links: One-Source FT, Soaring APRs, Severance

    November 10, 2009 10:26 PM

    The Financial Times runs one of those no-context, let's-quote-one-source-with-obvious-bias stories it likes to do, this one on global food corporations saying it's foolish for countries to try to be self-sufficient in their food supply, even in the wake of... Continue reading

16. The Audit

    Loyal Readers and Junk Traffic

    November 10, 2009 01:29 PM

    (See the first part of this post) What the Journal does have that nobody else does is more than a million paying subscribers to its Web site, giving it what I've very roughly estimated at $60 million to... Continue reading

17. The Audit

    What’s Murdoch Up to with Google and WSJ.com?

    November 10, 2009 12:29 PM

    Everybody's all inflamed about Rupert Murdoch bumbling through part of an interview on News Corp.'s Internet strategy in which he said that he might block Google from indexing Wall Street Journal content online or some such thing. You'd be... Continue reading

18. The Audit

    Monday Links: Bad Stats, TBTF, “Less with Less”

    November 9, 2009 10:54 PM

    The New York Times reports that "A widening gap between data and reality is distorting the government’s picture of the country’s economic health, overstating growth and productivity in ways that could affect the political debate on issues like trade,... Continue reading

19. The Audit

    LAT a Bit Wide of the Mark on Health Care

    November 9, 2009 03:33 PM

    The Los Angeles Times's David Lazarus beats back an accusation of using a red herring—and then goes on to push a bit of a straw man. He writes about WellPoint, the biggest private health insurer in the country, cutting... Continue reading

20. The Audit

    Good WSJ Story on the Wall Street-Subprime Nexus

    November 9, 2009 10:20 AM

    The Wall Street Journal has a good scoop on a story showing the connection of Wall Street to the shadier parts of the subprime industry. It reports on a settlement between mom-and-pop investors, who got snowed into lending to... Continue reading

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